THE ETHICS OF JOURNALISM
When I became not only sole Proprietor of _The Spectator_ but also
Editor-in-Chief, Chief Leader-writer, and Chief Reviewer, it was natural
that I should confront myself with the problem of the position and use
of the journalist--in a word, that I should ask myself what I was doing.
Should I accept and be content with the ordinary outlook of the
journalist on his profession, or should I in any particular strike out a
new line, or an extension of an old one for myself?
At that time, i.e. in 1898, the air was full of talk as to the functions
and duties of the journalist, for journalism was emerging from its
period of veiled power and was beginning to fill a much larger space in
the public mind. But in my case this was not the whole of the
opportunity. By a singular set of circumstances I found myself in the
unique position just described. Townsend and Hutton, it is true, were
joint Editors and joint Proprietors; but the sense of responsibility of
each to the other was a strong check. I, however, as sole Proprietor and
sole Editor, could do exactly what I liked. I could decide, without
reference to anyone else, the policy to be adopted. Further, as Chief
Leader-writer, I was the man who had to carry out the policy adopted. I
had, that is, the function of making the decisions immediately
operative. This is more important in fact than it is in theory. In
theory an Editor's word--subject to the Proprietor's veto--is final. He
gives his instructions to the leader-writer, and the leader-writer,
presuming that he is not a fool or a headstrong egoist or a man
determined to flout his Editor's wishes, obeys them. That is the theory.
But there are several mitigating circumstances. In the first place, it
is often difficult for an Editor to make his policy quite clear to his
staff. Next, the leader-writer, no matter how strong his intention to
obey his instructions and to enter into the spirit of his chief, may
fail to do so, from want of that complete clarity of mind that comes
only with personal conviction. If not his own view, his own
understanding of the facts is apt to get in the way and prevent him
carrying out his duties exactly as his chief meant him to perform them,
and exactly as he himself wishes to perform them.
Again, by a sort of law of reversed effort, the leader-writer may be too
anxious to carry out his chief's wishes and so may distort the Editor's
view. There is yet another way in which a loss of power may occur. If
the Editor had himself been writing, he would have seen as he wrote that
this or that particular line of policy that he had adopted was not
tenable, and therefore he would have altered that line. The
conscientious leader-writer may, however, resist this conversion by
circumstantial argument. He may feel:
This seems to me to be all wrong, but I have got to make the
best of it. Otherwise I shall be taking the responsibility,
which I do not want to take, of altering my Chief's instructions.
He said, "Defend the Government's action," so
defend it I must.
But the Editor himself may be in a similar position. If he has an active
Proprietor who gives regular and specific instructions, he is not really
the Editor but only the Proprietor's mouthpiece. In that case, he, too,
can, as it were, avoid a great deal of the feeling of personal
responsibility. He may say,
I do not like this view. But, after all, it is the matter for the
Proprietor, and he may have good reasons for his decision.
Anyway, I cannot in a matter of this kind attempt to dictate
to him, because if a mistake is made, he will have to stand the
racket. After all, I may be wrong as to the policy we should
pursue, and if I am, then I shall be doing what I do not want to
do, that is, gravely injuring somebody else's property and
position. A man may make great sacrifices and run great risks
with his own property, but I don't want to be told later that I
was the man who insisted on taking his own line against the
opinion of his chief with the result that a fatal blow was given
to the position of the paper, I don't feel justified in risking
another man's property.
The Editor, in fact, is very much in the position of the leader-writer.
These things being so, I realised that the responsibility for whatever
was done in _The Spectator_ was going to be my responsibility in a
very special degree. I could not plead consideration for anyone else's
need if I had to defend _The Spectator's_ position. Therefore, I
must be not only specially careful as to what I did from day to day, but
I must think out for myself an answer to the journalistic interrogatory
"_Quo vadis_?" What is the journalist's function in the State, and
how am I to carry it out? The formula for the discharge of the
journalist's functions, which I ultimately came to consider to be true
in the abstract and capable of being translated into action, was,
curiously enough, the formula of a man whose judgment I profoundly
distrusted, whose work as a journalist I disliked, and who as a man was
to me exceedingly unsympathetic. It was that of Mr. Stead, the erratic
Editor first of the _Pall Mall_ and then of the _Review of
Reviews_. The journalist, he declared, was "the watch-dog of
society." Stead, though a man of honest intent and very great ability,
was also a man of many failings, many ineptitudes, many prejudices, and
many injustices--witness the attitude he adopted in his last years
towards Lord Cromer. Further, there was an element of commonness in his
mental attitude as in his style. But with all this, he had a very
considerable _flair_, not only in the matter of words, but in
ideas. Though the phrase was not used in his time, he was a pastmaster
in the art of making "slogans." This, of the watch-dogs in the case of
the Press, was one of his best. It exactly fitted the views which I was
gradually developing in regard to the journalist's functions. In the
course of my twelve years' apprenticeship at _The Spectator_,
_The Economist_, _The Standard,_ and the other journals for
which I wrote, I made it my business to study the work of my colleagues.
I soon saw that the men who did the best and most useful work were the
watch-dogs; the men who gave warnings. But I also very soon found out
that in practice the part is one which cannot be played if the performer
wants to have a pleasant time in the world, or to make himself generally
liked by his fellow-men. A watch-dog is never popular. How could he be?
People do not like to be disturbed, and to be warned generally means a
loud noise and often a shock to delicate nerves. Besides, it generally
ends in asking people not to do something they are strongly tempted to
do. The bark of the watch-dog is, in a rough-and-ready way, much too
much like the voice of conscience to be agreeable to the natural man.
Though sometime after he may be very grateful to the watch-dog for his
bark, when he first hears it he is inclined to say:
Oh! drat that dog. I wish he'd shut up. There he is barking
away, and it is probably only the moon, or some harmless
tramp, or a footstep a mile away down the road, for the brute's
power of hearing is phenomenal. Yet if he goes on like that I
must pay some attention, or else there'll be an awful row with
the Boss to-morrow morning if anything was stolen or any
damage done. The creature's spoilt my night, anyway; I must
get up and see what's going on.
The result is that the tired householder paddles about the house in
carpet slippers, grumbling about this folly of thinking that anyone
could be so unjust or unfair as to attack a well-meaning man like him.
It would be an infamy to think of any such scheme. "I want my neighbours
to trust me, and they will never do that unless I trust them. So I will
have another glass of port and get to bed, and, if that infernal dog
will allow me, go to sleep."
"All's Well" is always a more popular motto for life than "Beware!" It
is not only the householder who dislikes the watch-dog. There are people
who have more sinister motives than a love of peace for disliking the
watch-dog. Those who like to have a night out occasionally without
comment from the Master; and those who think it only fair that certain
perquisites should be smuggled out of the house by the charwoman and
others without any fuss, "cannot abide" the dog and its horrid way of
barking at a shawl thrown over a large plaited basket.
Nobody [they argue] wants to see the master robbed, but
there is a great difference between robbery and having things
a little easy now and then, and no tiresome questions asked.
If we are all to be deprived of our night's rest by that dog,
there will be no end of trouble, and if it goes on much further
we shall have to see about getting rid of him, or else changing
him for a dog that is more reasonable.
But that is not the whole of the trouble. Not only is the watch-dog
generally disliked, but he is in danger of being turned from what he
ought to be, into a gruff old grumbler. You cannot go on perpetually
barking out warnings without getting a hoarse note into your voice, and
that makes you compare very ill with the parlour dog and his charming
manners, or with the sporting dogs who go out and attend their masters
at their pleasures. The working dogs, too, such as those of the
shepherd, are far more popular and far more picturesque.
Finally, the watch-dog is often misunderstood because he has got a very
narrow gamut of notes. His bark is taken as an angry warning, when all
he means to say is: "This is a new man and a new policy, and you had
better look into it and see whether it is all right. I should not be
doing my duty if I did not warn you to look out." Then if the new-comer
turns out to be a harmless or useful person, the watch-dog is blamed
because he did not recognise merit on the instant.
But if acting as watch-dog is a disagreeable job, as it most undoubtedly
is, it has its compensations. Journalism of which the mainspring is the
gaining of pleasure may easily degenerate into something akin to the
comic actor's function. Stevenson in a famous passage compared the
writers of _belles-lettres_ to "_filles de joie._" That was
not, I think, appropriate to the artists in words, but at any rate it is
a condition into which the journalist who knows nothing of the watch-
dog's duties can easily descend. Our danger is to fall into a kind of
intellectual prostitution, and from this the duty of barking keeps us
free.
"But," it may be argued in reply, "why need you bark in such a loud and
raucous way? Why need you be so bitter?" Here comes a close and
interesting issue. How is it possible to give a warning in earnest
without exposing one's self to the accusation of being bitter? I have
again and again tried, as a journalist, to consider this question, for
it has often been my lot to be accused of "intense personal bitterness."
Yet in reality I have felt no such feeling. What people have called
bitterness has to me seemed only barking sufficiently loud to force
attention. I have often, indeed, had a great deal of admiration and
sympathy for the men for whom I have been supposed to entertain angry
feelings. I have longed to say nice things about them, but that, of
course, is impossible when you are on a warning campaign. The journalist
that does that is lost. At once the friends of the person against whom
the warning is issued complain of your lack of character, of your want
of stability, of your habit of turning round and facing the other way.
You cannot be a watch-dog only at stated hours, and on off days purr
like the family cat.
I will take a specific illustration of what I mean by the watch-dog
function in journalism. Throughout my life I have been a strong
democratic Imperialist. To me the alliance of free self-governing
Dominions, which constitute the British Empire, has a sacred character.
It has rendered great help to the cause of peace, civilisation, and
security, and it will render still more. I feel, further, that
throughout Africa, as throughout India, we have done an incomparable
service to humanity by our maintenance of just and stable government.
Our record on the hideous crime of slavery, even if it stood alone,
would be a justification for the British Empire. But it does not stand
alone; there are hundreds of other grounds for saying that, if the
British Empire had not existed, it would have had to be invented in the
interests of mankind. But though I was always so ardent a supporter of
the British Empire and of the Imperial spirit, I was not one of those
people who thought that the mere word "Imperialism" would cover a
multitude of misdeeds.
To come to close quarters with my illustration, I thought that the
watch-dog had to do a good deal of barking in the case of Mr. Rhodes's
practical methods of expanding the British Empire. They seemed to me so
dangerous and so little consistent with a high sense of national honour
and good faith that I felt it was part of my job to protest against them
with all my strength. We were told, for example, by his friends, that
Mr. Rhodes believed in the policy of the open cheque-book. If you wanted
a thing, you must pay for it, and he did. He went further than that: his
favourite maxim was said to be, "I never yet saw an opposition that I
could not buy or break." It appeared to me that here was an extremely
dangerous man, and one against whom the public ought to be warned, and
as loudly as possible.
What first set me on his track was Rhodes's gift of £10,000 to Mr.
Parnell for the funds of the Irish Nationalists. The gift was made about
the time when Mr. Rhodes wished to get his Charter through the House of
Commons. Of course, I know that Mr. Rhodes was accustomed to say that
the gift and the Charter had nothing to do with each other, and even
that the dates would not fit. It was, he declared, an unworthy suspicion
to suggest that it had ever crossed his mind that Parnellite criticism,
then very loud in the House, could be lulled by a good subscription.
Besides, he was and always had been a whole-hearted Home Ruler. Mr.
Rhodes, who bought policies as other men buy pictures, made it a
condition, of course, that the Nationalists should assure him that they
had no intention of leaving the Empire!
My view of the facts was different, and I believe it was the true view.
Mr. Rhodes wanted the Charter badly, and he did not much mind how he got
it. He did not, of course, want the Charter in order to make himself
rich. He wanted to extend the Empire in South Africa on particular
lines, and these included a Chartered Province under his personal
guidance. To accomplish this he was perfectly willing to take the help
of bitter enemies of the Empire and of England, like Mr. Parnell; men
who wanted to give our Empire the blow at the heart. Worse than that, he
was willing to give them the pecuniary help they needed in their effort
to destroy England, and to risk the consequences. That was surely a case
for the watch-dog. "Look at what the man in the fur-lined Imperial cloak
has got under it."
To my mind what was even worse than the Parnellite subscription was the
way in which the Chartered Company was run and the way in which its
shares at par were showered on "useful" politicians at home and in South
Africa. The Liberal party at Westminster professed to be anti-
Imperialist and pro-Boer. Yet I noted to my disgust that Mr. Rhodes not
only called himself a Liberal, but that quite a number of "earnest
Liberals" were commercially interested in the Charter.
In this context I may recall a phrase used by a witness before a
Parliamentary Committee at Capetown, which made inquiries as to the
distribution of "shares at par" when the selling price of Chartered
stock was very high. The witness was asked on what system certain
authorised but unallotted shares were distributed at par. They were, he
stated, given to journalists and other persons "_who had to be
satisfied on this Charter_." I am not by nature a suspicious person,
but, rightly or wrongly, that appeared to me to be a short cut to
ruining the Empire. Though personally I knew nothing about Rhodes, and
was inclined to like an adventurous, pushful spirit, it was clear to me
that, holding the views I did as to the functions of the journalist, I
had no choice but to bark my loudest. My Imperialist friends were for
the most part horribly shocked at what they called my gross and unjust
personal prejudices against a great man. Some of them, indeed, asked me
how I could reconcile my alleged Unionist and anti-separatist views with
opposition to the great Empire-builder. When I told them that it was
just because I was an Imperialist, and did not want to see the Empire
destroyed, that I opposed Rhodes, pointed out to them that he was an
arch corrupter, and insisted that corruption destroyed, not made,
Empires, I was told that I did not know what I was talking about. I was
a foolish idealist who did not understand practical politics. Such self-
righteous subtleties must be ignored in the conduct of great affairs.
This talk, instead of putting me off, made me feel it was absolutely
necessary, however disagreeable, to pursue my policy. In this view I
soon had the good fortune to obtain the support and encouragement of
Lord Cromer. Here, by the admission of all men, was the greatest of
living Imperialists. Yet I found that he was in full sympathy with my
determination to let the British public know what was going on.
As I have said, I felt very deeply about the gift to the Nationalists.
Later, I heard that Mr. Rhodes had not only bought off, or tried to buy
off, Irish opposition, but that he had actually offered and given a
considerable sum of money to the funds of the Liberal Party in order to
get them to change their policy in regard to Egypt. The great part of
the Liberal leaders and the party generally considered that we were
pledged to leave Egypt. This did not suit Mr. Rhodes, with his curious
shilling-Atlas and round-ruler point of view about a Cape to Cairo
Railway. What would happen if, when the railway was completed to the
Egyptian frontier, the platelayers found either a hostile Egypt or a
foreign power in possession, and determined to prevent a junction of the
rails? Mr. Rhodes regarded such a possibility as intolerable, and, after
his manner, determined to buy out the opposition to his great hobby.
Accordingly, he approached Mr. Schnadhorst, the Boss of the Liberal
Party, and told him that he, Rhodes, was a good sound Liberal, and
wanted to give £10,000 to the Liberal funds, which were then much
depleted--owing to the secession several years previously of Lord
Hartington and Mr. Chamberlain. But the gift was conditional. Mr. Rhodes
did not see his way to present the money unless he could have an
assurance from Mr. Gladstone himself that the Liberal party would not,
if they came into power, evacuate Egypt. In a word, he proposed to buy a
non-evacuation policy, and offered a good price for it. Mr. Schnadhorst
wanted £10,000 for his party, and wanted it badly. Accordingly he wrote
a letter to Mr. Rhodes, assuring him that the party would not evacuate
Egypt. The letter would not do for Mr. Rhodes. He wanted a categorical
pledge from Mr. Gladstone. This he only obtained indirectly, and
ultimately I believe that only about £5,000 was paid.
But though for several years I heard rumours of a large subscription by
Mr. Rhodes to the Liberal funds, they were vague. Chance, however,
enabled me to prove what I felt was probably the truth. It happened that
Mr. Boyd, one of Mr. Rhodes's private secretaries, sent a letter to
_The Spectator_ about Rhodesia, in which he made a clear allusion
to the subscription to the Liberal funds. I at once noted this admission
and insisted that the matter should now be cleared up. The Liberal
leaders ought, I declared, to say frankly whether any subscription had
ever been accepted from Mr. Rhodes.
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, as leader of the Liberal Party, wrote an
indignant letter to _The Spectator_, declaring that the statement
was a lie. He added that he was authorised by Sir William Harcourt to
say that he joined in the denial and so in the accusation of falsehood
against Mr. Rhodes's secretary. I then called on Mr. Rhodes in justice
to himself to make good, if he could, the allegations of his private
secretary.
Then the whole strange story came out. Mr. Rhodes wrote to say that the
correspondence with Mr. Schnadhorst was at the Cape, but that he had
cabled for it, and that when it came he would send it to _The
Spectator_ and let the British people judge whether the story was or
was not a lie. When the letters arrived they showed that Mr. Rhodes had
actually proposed to buy the policy he wanted, as he might have bought a
shirt or a suit-case, and that the famous Liberal Manager was quite
willing to do business--especially as it was pretty obvious that the
evacuation of Egypt was no longer popular with a considerable section of
Liberals.
I was, naturally, well satisfied with the result of the warnings which I
had given in regard to Mr. Rhodes. I had brought about an exposure of
his methods, and had also exposed the carelessness and recklessness
which allowed the agents of the Liberal Party to make a secret deal with
a man like Mr. Rhodes, and a deal in which the consideration was a large
sum of money. And all the time a number of the conventional Liberals
were denouncing Mr. Rhodes for his shoddy Imperialism! The attitude of
the public at large in regard to my action was curious. The politicians
on my own side evidently thought that I had pushed things too far, and
had been indiscreet. Some of them naively asked, in effect, where should
I be if something unpleasant were to come out about the past of my own
leaders. When I suggested that I should have to do exactly what I had
done in the case of the Liberals, they were very much shocked at my
"disloyalty to my party."
The Liberals, on the other hand, though the vast majority of them,
leaders and led, had known nothing whatever of the transaction, and were
in truth greatly ashamed of it, instead of being angry with their chief
Party Manager, were violently angry with me. They declared that I was
showing a most vindictive spirit towards a great and good man like Mr.
Gladstone. I had "entered into a conspiracy with Mr. Rhodes in regard to
the publication of a private correspondence." When I pointed out that,
as a matter of fact, I disliked Mr. Rhodes's methods quite as much as
they did, and held that it was as bad to buy a policy as to sell one,
they inconsequently murmured that I had dealt a deadly blow against the
sanctity of public life by helping Rhodes to break faith, and that my
conduct was unforgivable.
I may end my story by a description of an interview which I had in
regard to this matter with Mr. Rhodes at his hotel in Mayfair. It was
the only occasion on which I saw or spoke to him. His private secretary,
Mr. Boyd, came to me and said that Mr. Rhodes was very anxious to hand
over to me in person the letters between himself and the Liberal
Manager. Would I therefore mind going to see Mr. Rhodes, and letting him
tell me the whole story in his own words? I did not feel in a
particularly kindly frame of mind towards Mr. Rhodes, and I knew and
thoroughly disliked his ways with the Press. Further, I did not want to
run any risk of Mr. Rhodes hinting later that I had tried to blackmail
him, or that he had made a suggestion as to interesting me later in the
Chartered Company which had been apparently welcomed by me, and so on
and so on. I therefore expressed my opinion that there was no need
whatever for a personal interview. Mr. Boyd thereupon made a strong plea
_ad misericordiam_. Mr. Rhodes was, he said, exceedingly ill and
was worrying himself greatly about the matter. He had not long to live,
and I should be playing a very inhuman part if I did not grant the
interview to a very sick man. Melted by Boyd's evident sincerity and
anxiety I agreed, but only on the condition that if Mr. Rhodes had
anyone present at the interview, I also must have a friend present. That
I felt was rather an insulting condition, and I rather expected that Mr.
Rhodes would have replied: "If Mr. Strachey cannot treat me like a
gentleman, I don't want to see him." Instead, a most polite message came
back from Mr. Rhodes, saying that he gladly agreed to my suggestion and
that he would see me quite alone. Why Mr. Rhodes was so insistent as to
an interview I cannot tell, unless it was that he had been rather
worried about _The Spectator's_ hostility to him, and he thought he
might be able to mollify me in the course of a private talk. I remember
Mr. Boyd told me how he had heard Rhodes often express great trouble and
surprise at my attitude towards him. Why should a journalist whom he had
never seen be so hostile? What could have induced him to take the line
he took in _The Spectator_? "I have never been able to make him
out," was how he summed up the position. That struck me as very
characteristic. It had evidently never occurred to Rhodes that a
journalist could act on the watch-dog principle. The way his mind
appeared to work was something like this.
Strachey and _The Spectator_ are avowedly Imperialists and
strong anti-Little Englanders. Therefore they ought to be on
my side. If they are not with me, it can only be that they are
standing out for some reason or other. What is it? It isn't
money. If they had wanted to be "satisfied on this Charter"
they would have made it clear to me. It can't be pride or
prejudice. You can't wound or injure a man you have never
seen. As far as I know, Strachey has not been got at by any
of my personal enemies. He hates Kruger and his party even
more than he does me. It's a most disagreeable and distracting
puzzle.
That, I am told, was the way the great man argued till his
_entourage_ called the spectacle of the puzzled pro-consul deeply
pathetic. Rhodes was, I believe, genuinely "haunted" by the problem
which he could not solve. I and _The Spectator_ got on his nerves.
But perhaps if he saw me he could get the solution he desired. He had
squared Boers and Governors and high British Officials, and Generals and
Zulu Chiefs, and missionaries, and miners, and Jewish diamond-dealers by
talk and nothing more. Why not this journalist? He would try. He would
worry his secretaries to within an inch of their lives till they got the
Editor to see him.
Touched, as I have said, by the appeal about the anguish of the dying
lion, I yielded, went to his hotel, and was ushered in by Boyd. I did
not feel the charm which was supposed to flow from Rhodes. To begin
with, I thought him an ugly-looking fellow. The "late Roman Emperor"
profile was a very flattering suggestion. Instead, his appearance
explained a quaint and Early Victorian saying which had greatly tickled
me when it fell from Lord Cromer's lips. "I saw him once in Cairo. I
didn't like him. He seemed to me a great snob." Rhodes ought to have had
the manners and mental habits of a gentleman, but apparently these had
suffered a good deal of dilution in the diamond-fields. His address was
distinctly oily, and I remember thinking what a mistake he had made in
his conception of the stage directions for the short dialogue scene
which he had insisted on his entourage producing.--"_Empire-
Builder_, generous, human, alert, expansive, and full-blooded.
_Publicist_, dry, thin-lipped, pedantic, opinionative, hard." That
was what he, no doubt, expected of the cast. In a word, his attempt to
fascinate lacked polish. It was clumsy, almost to the point of
innocence, and opportunist to the point of weakness. He did not know how
to take me, and was obviously "fishing."
I was determined to seize the opportunity of telling Mr. Rhodes fairly
and squarely what I thought of him and his policy. I therefore received
his elephantine flatteries and civilities with a grim silence, and then
told him I should like him to know what had made me oppose him, and
would continue to make me do so. I was an Imperialist, I pointed out,
and I regarded him as an enemy to the cause of my country. He had given
payments of money to the Irish enemies of Britain and the Empire, and
that I could never forgive. "The Parnellites were engaged in a plot to
ruin the British Empire. You knew it, and yet you helped them. You gave
them the means to arm and fortify their conspirators and assassins." Mr.
Rhodes appeared put out by this frontal attack--no doubt an unpleasant
one, and so intended. He began by making elaborate explanations, and by
declaring "the dates won't fit," but his arguments were muddled and
incoherent. "I assure you you are doing me wrong about the Irish policy.
I know it is not an intentional injustice, but indeed you are wrong. I
am sure I could convince you of this if there was only time."
Though I was not mollified I felt there was no more to be said. Mr.
Rhodes was not going to convince me nor I to convert him. Accordingly, I
got up and moved to the door. On this Mr. Rhodes said, very
flatteringly, by way of goodbye, that he was greatly pleased that "these
letters," as they were obliged to be published, should appear in _The
Spectator_. His device was pathetically obvious. He knew, or believed
he knew, that the journalist's passion was "copy," and he wanted to
remind me that he had supplied me with one of the very best political
"stories" ever put before an Editor.
I was comparatively a young man then, only a little over forty, and I
was disgusted at what I felt was an impertinent attempt to "land" me. I
instantly pulled the papers out of my pocket and flung them on to the
table, saying,
You are entirely mistaken if you think I want your letters for
_The Spectator_. As far as I am concerned, they may just as
well appear in _The Times_ or any other paper. All I want is
publicity. I have been accused by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
of publishing lies, and that I do not mean to endure.
I make no claim, however, on behalf of _The Spectator_. Choose
your own paper.
Here Mr. Rhodes showed an excellent command of himself. He urged me
strongly, nay, he implored me to take the papers. No other course would
be fair to his secretary, who had been called a liar. "As poor Boyd was
unjustly accused of lying, in _The Spectator_, I am sure you will
agree that it is only fair that his good faith should be vindicated in
the same place." To this plea I could, of course, offer no opposition. I
therefore replaced the papers in my pocket, said "good morning," and
walked away.
I suppose many people, certainly Mr. Rhodes's admirers, will say that I
was brutal and unjust. If they do, I think I have a good defence, but I
am not going to set it forth here. More interesting is the general
opinion I formed of Rhodes after seeing him in the flesh, and
experiencing what was supposed to be his special gift--that of talking a
man round.
Rhodes, I had to acknowledge, was not the kind of magnificent man that I
had sometimes envisaged him. I think he was a lucky man rather than a
man of genius. The chief trouble with him was that he really believed
that all men were buyable. He was a kind of throw-back to the eighteenth
century, just as the eighteenth-century politicians were to the age of
Juvenal and Tacitus. He took their records seriously and acted on their
views of humanity. If he chose to use his money for buying policies as
other people used theirs to buy places, why not? What else, granted that
he was the kind of man described, could Rhodes do with his money?
But these excuses, though I admitted them, made me not less but more
eager to oppose Mr. Rhodes and the influences he employed. My duty was
to expose Mr. Rhodes, _i.e._ to get people to understand his
methods. These almost entirely depended upon secrecy, and that made
publicity my best weapon. When once the Rhodesian moral strategy was
made public, the game was up.
I believe I did some good by my double warning. In the first place, I
warned the British public that Rhodes, if not watched, would secretly
buy policies behind their backs and that the party machine, when in want
of money, would with equal secrecy sell them. And I proved my point,
incredible as it may seem.
"But why rake up an old scandal?" asks Urbanus with an ironic smile.
Because the warning ought to be a standing warning. I am by no means
sure that when all the secrets are known, we, or rather our
grandchildren, will not find that Mr. Rhodes has had imitators, in
recent times.
I could, of course, mention other examples of the way in which this
particular watch-dog gave trouble, and got himself heartily disliked,
but the one I have given will serve. Besides, the other examples touch
living people, and with living people I want to have as little to do as
possible in these memoirs.